-- Rabbi
Abraham Cooper, of the
Simon Wiesenthal Center
(annual salary: $750,000)
-- revealing how sensitive
they are now becoming to
allegations that they are
the traditional enemies of
free speech.

London, Friday, May 11, 2001

[Images added by
this website: Simon Wiesenthal, who is
paid $50,000 per annum for the use of his
name; a sheet of World War II deathmask
stamps of Reinhard Heydrich:
IRVING
COLLECTION]

"Nazi"
auctions banned

FROM TOM TUGEND, LOS ANGELES

ON-LINE auctioneer
eBay
has promised to ban the sale of all items
related to Nazi Germany and race-hate
groups from this week.

Earlier, eBay had discontinued the sale
of similar memorabilia of recent origin,
but exempted items more than 50 years old,
which were deemed "historical."

The
Simon
Wiesenthal Center, which had lobbied
for the change for two years, welcomed the
decision, maintaining that eBay had become
the largest on-line retailer of Nazi
material.

"Because eBay charges for auction
listings and gets a cut of successful
sales, it is morally responsible for what
is available on its massive site,"
declared Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the
center's associate dean.

Rabbi Cooper said he had urged the
company to follow the stricter European
rules on hate material in its US
operations.

"This is not a matter of free speech
rights," he argued.

According
to Mike Jacobson, a lawyer for
eBay, overseas expansion and public
opinion were key factors in its decision.
"Given our expansion, as well as feedback
we've received from our users," he said,
"we reviewed our policy and concluded that
these changes are appropriate."

The company, based in San Jose,
California, will permit the continued sale
of German stamps and coins from the 1930s
and 1940s, as well as Second World War
material.

But its new policy will additionally
ban material associated with murders
committed an the past 100 years, and of
letters, artwork and other goods with the
names or faces of criminals.

The Internet portal Yahoo! banned Nazi
and Ku Klux Klan memorabilia in January,
in the wake of court rulings in France and
worldwide protest.

Earlier this month, eBay knocked
Amazon.com from the top spot as the
most-visited e-commerce site.